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Face-referenced or Viewer-referenced：Effects of Sexual Dimorphism Cues, Emotional Expression and Physical Attractiveness on Preferences for Direct-gazing Face wen fangfang BIN ZUO 2014, 37(4): 834-839.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3996KB) ( )   Perceived facial attractiveness can influence people’s social interactions with one another, including mate selection, intimate relationship, hiring decision, and voting behavior. Facial attractiveness represents one’s conception of the ideal in face and gives the greatest degree of pleasure to the senses. Most of the studies showed that masculinity- femininity cues, gaze direction and emotional expression played important roles in the facial attractiveness. Interactions among the effects of sexual dimorphism cues, emotional expression and physical attractiveness on preferences for direct-gazing face were examined in this two-phase experiment. From the perspective of face-referenced, using FaceGen 3.1 to adjust the eye’s gaze direction, Experiment 1 found that preferences for direct gaze when judging different sexual dimorphism cues, emotional expression and physical attractiveness face; Preferences for direct gaze are stronger when judging feminine/happy and neutral/physical attractive face than when judging masculine/disgust and angry/ unattractive face; For the different physical attractive and sexual dimorphism cues, preferences for direct gaze are stronger when judging happy and neutral face than when judging disgust and angry face. From the perspective of viewer-referenced, using FaceGen 3.1 to generate front versus three-quarter views of faces, Experiment 2 found that there were no significant preferences for direct gaze when judging different sexual dimorphism cues, emotional expression and physical attractiveness face; Preferences for direct gaze are stronger when judging feminine/happy, disgust and angry face than when judging masculine/neutral face. These findings present novel evidence that preferences for direct gaze on facial attractiveness are based on face-referenced processing, rather than viewer-referenced. The preferences for the attractive, positive emotional expression and direct gaze face are on the straight line with the adaptation for efficient allocation of evolution, and the preferences for feminine face can be interpreted from Chinese feminine, long-term orientation and collective cultures. References | Related Articles | Metrics

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The Development and Prospect of Researches on Driving Decision-making 2014, 37(4): 862-866.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3755KB) ( )   Driving decision-making is a process where drivers make the right driving choices and behaviour by responding to different traffic situations. It derives from Ergonomics and its inevitable tools are computers. Accordingly, driving-related problems will be solved through the interactive way between human and machine. With the development of Cognitive Psychology, the relevant researches have been connected with psychology and became the centre of traffic psychology in recent years. In the course of studies, the researchers began to emphasize the role that drivers' psychological factors played in driving decision-making, and to explore the mechanism on how it works. The most important thing is to figure out what psychology can do in improving the driving decision-making ability. The studies of driving decision-making has went through three periods: behaviour modeling, psychological measurements and empirical research. Driving decision-making was put forward for the first time in the period of behaviour modeling, when the researchers added motivational factors in driving behaviours based on Ergonomics. Then, in the period of psychological measurements, the studies focused on analysing the factors that affected driving decision-making by constructing scales. Due to the improvements of the experimental methods, the researchers began to use behavioral experiments, eye movements or EEG to analyse the structure of driving decision-making in the period of empirical research. It was in this period that the researchers got some fruitful results. They came to a conclusion that its structure was in line with the dual decision-making model, and it was, at the same time, affected by both cognitive and emotional factors. The previous studies have revealed that driving decision-making was influenced by age, gender, risk perception, emotion as well as decision-making style. Generally speaking, in driving, young drivers will take more risk than adults, female drivers' decision-making are more prone to be affected by emotion. In the Iowa Gambling Task, female drivers' neural activities are more active. Driver, whose risk perception ability is higher, is easier to make correct driving decisions and they tend to have less risky behaviors. When the emotional state reaches to a critical level, it will affect the decision-making, too. Decision-making style is the habitual way of behavior; it has a stable impact on the process of making decisions in different traffic situations. The purpose of traffic psychology is to prevent accidents and decrease the lost of casualty, thus making the improvements of driving decision-making became a newly-emerged field in China. Improving drivers' risk perception ability, as has been proved in some studies overseas, is a possible and tentative way. In the future, researchers should further the studies by focusing on the following three aspects: (a) analyze its structure and process from a cognitive or emotional perspective; (b) improve driving decision-making ability through training; (c) explore its features under the context of China's unique traffic culture so as to make it serve our drivers as early as possible. Related Articles | Metrics

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Visual Feature Binding: Based on Temporal Synchronization or Same Spatial Location Zhi-Hua LIU 2014, 37(4): 816-822.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4957KB) ( )   Attention plays an important regulatory role in the visual feature binding. There are two possibilities that attention binds the suitable features together. Firstly, through paying attention to spatial location, features on the same location are bound. Namely, spatial location serves as binding clues. Secondly, attention binds different features according to temporal synchronization of features from the same object. Namely, binding is based on the temporal synchronization or adjacency. This study explored the mechanism of attention in feature binding which base on temporal synchronization or spatial location. Two paradigms, rapid serial visual presentation(RSVP) and feature dissociation were used to artificially mimic a condition of temporal synchronization. Three experiments were designed in this study. Experiment 1 and experiment 2 used RSVP paradigm, and they held two experiment conditions, fixing presentation and changing presentation. In former condition, 4 distractors and 1 target were rapidly presented on the location of fixation point in turn, and then to observe temporal binding effects on the same location. In latter condition, distractors and target appeared alternately above and below fixation point, and then to explore temporal binding effects on different location. Dependent variables are illusory conjunction(IC) of target's color. The main results are as follows: no matter what the distance between target and distractors, in fixing presentation conditions, color IC were more likely to take place in temporal adjacent events, t(34)=81.23，P＜.0001；In changing presentation conditions, color IC were more from the same location events, t(34)=－17.29，P＜0.0001，which revealed that features from the same location were more easily to combine than temporal adjacent features, F(1,34)＝142.1，P＜.001. Experiment 3 using feature dissociation paradigm, artificially separated attributes(letter and frame color) of objects on different location. There were three temporal synchronization conditions. The first one is the control condition, in which two letters and color frames simultaneously presented on different location. On this condition, the numbers of IC from frame color and letter are baseline. The second condition is temporal synchronization of different location, in which color frame in one position appeared together with letter in another position. The third condition is temporal synchronization of the same location, in which letters and color frame in the same location appeared in the meantime. The experiment will examine the difference of IC among three conditions. If the second IC numbers are higher than baseline level, but the third was lower, temporal synchronization theory will be proved. The result showed that there was a significant difference of IC among three conditions, F(2,58)＝25.103，P＜.0001. Temporal synchronization on different location and same location were both apparently higher than baseline level(P＜.0001), but difference of temporal synchronization between different location and same location was not significant(P＞.05). Although there was IC on second condition which seemed showing temporal synchronization, IC also appeared on the third condition. Both of ICs were higher than baseline and the difference between two types of IC was not significant. It shows that temporal synchronization assumption was not be proved. In conclusions: 1) When features were located in same spatial position, temporal adjacent features tended to be bound; Temporal adjacent features located in different position could not be bound. 2) When the distance between objects on different locations decreased, the feature binding was still based on same location instead of temporal synchronization. 3) There were more ICs on both temporal synchronization conditions of features on same and different locations, which shows no evidence to support temporal synchronization theory. Related Articles | Metrics

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Influence of Knowledge on Label Effect during Adults’ Inductive Reasoning 2014, 37(4): 845-850.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4010KB) ( )   The label effect observed in inductive reasoning suggests that label, by providing an effective cue, such as category knowledge or feature similarity promotes the performance of inductive reasoning. Consequently, there are two kinds of hypotheses to explain the phenomenon, one is the view of category which emphasizes the category information provided by a label, and the other one is the view of similarity which focuses on the physical similarity of labels. Previous studies with unfamiliar artificial materials usually focused on the surface knowledge about category carried by a label. However in reality, a real label, say “tiger” or “lion”, usually contains deep knowledge, such as the information about body, size, behavior, living environment and others, especially in Chinese. But this kind of information carried by a label is seldom to distinguish from surface knowledge, and how the surface and deep knowledge carried by a label affect the process of inductive reasoning is still not clear. In this study, two experiments were conducted to explore the influence of knowledge on label effect during adults’ inductive reasoning. To avoid the influences of other factors, such as visual picture or verbal introduction and to investigate the label effect in a more precise and sensible way, a relationship judgment with 5 point rating was used as the inductive reasoning task. In Experiment 1, natural animal names were used as materials. To compare the influence of surface and deep knowledge carried by labels, 24 animal names were selected, which could be divided into familiar and unfamiliar groups with equal number of items, according to a prior familiarity assessment. For the familiar materials, a label of animal name would carry both surface and deep knowledge; while for the unfamiliar materials, only surface knowledge was carried by a label. In Experiment 2, artificial animal names were used as materials to further investigate the influence of surface and deep knowledge on label effect, and the labels were manipulated whether contained a natural animal character or not. In the condition with animal character, both surface and deep knowledge would be carried in the artificial label, while in the condition without animal character, only surface knowledge of category would be carried. And the label effects were manipulated by sharing common ending characters or not in both experiments. The result reveals that consistent with previous studies, label effect was observed in both experiments, and label promoted inductive reasoning. However in Experiment 1, the label effect in real natural materials decreased significantly in familiar condition, indicating deep knowledge affects the label effect during inductive reasoning. And in Experiment 2, when a label with a natural animal character, participants preferred to judge a closer relationship for the artificial label pairs, which further support the influence of deep knowledge on label effect. In both Experiments, the interaction between label effect and other factors supported the view of category, since the view of similarity could not explain the phenomenon of similar physical features in the conditions with common labels but different effect sizes of label. Related Articles | Metrics

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Number of strokes influences initial landing positions during Chinese reading Guo-Li Yan 2014, 37(4): 809-815.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4588KB) ( )   Much evidence suggests that low-level visual variables rather than high-level linguistic variables affect initial landing positions in alphabetic language scripts reading (Rayner, 2009). Written Chinese differs from alphabetic writing systems in many dimensions. Chinese uses a nonalphabetic, character-based script with square-shaped forms of different levels of visual complexity (i.e., roughly the number of strokes) as basic writing units. Yang and McConkie (1999) obtained a flat preferred viewing location curve and concluded that, unlike other languages, saccadic target selection is not word-based in Chinese reading. The results also showed that the number of strokes did not influence participants’ initial landing positions. However, we think that, in their study, the width of the space between adjacent characters is equivalent to half the width of a Chinese character, which maybe influence the results. Many researches have found that the number of strokes influences the processing of vocabulary recognition. The results suggested that readers tended to fixate the more complexity characters. In current study, sentences including two-character target words were adopted to examine whether the number of stroke influenced the landing positions. The number of stroke of the first and the second constituent characters were manipulated. 60 participants’ eye movements were monitored as they read texts. Their eye movements were recorded by a SR Research EyeLink 2000 eyetracker (sampling rate = 1000 Hz) that monitored the position of the right eye every two milliseconds. We found that there was different eye movements behavior in different fixation cases. When there was only one fixation on target word, the first fixation mostly landed on the centre of the words. While there were multiple fixations, readers first fixated at the beginning of the target words. There was a preferred viewing location in single-fixation cases during Chinese reading. In multiple fixation cases, if the first fixation landed at the beginning of a target word, the probability of refixating this word was the highest. Importantly, we found that when the number of first character’s strokes is high, readers mostly fixated the first character. And both the number of strokes of the first and second characters influence the probability of refixation. We argued that Chinese children use the “strategy-tactics” approach during reading. Related Articles | Metrics

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Emotional Prosody Processing under Two Tasks 2014, 37(4): 851-856.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4005KB) ( )   Emotion plays a very important role in daily life of human beings. One of its most useful functions is to elicit full preparations for adaptive reactions. However, to develop effective behavioral strategies needs successful and effective encoding of emotional stimuli. There have been many researches on emotion processing about visual channel stimulus, such as facial expression, emotional pictures and so on. Researches on emotional speech processing are relatively few. In addition, whether processing of emotional prosody can be modulated by selective attention is still controversial. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the neural mechanism of emotional prosody processing and what roles can experimental task play on it. Two experiments were carried out using both event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures. In experiment 1, the task was emotion identification of the speech and in experiment 2, the task was gender identification of the speakers. Three kinds of emotional stimuli, ie., happy, neutral and anger prosody were used in both experiments, which were produced by two professional speakers, a male and a female news broadcaster. 23 college students and postgraduates participated in the first experiment, the other 25 participated in the second. Behavioral results showed that: Identification of emotional stimulus was faster than neutral stimulus in both experiments. And there was a negative bias of valence effect, reaction to anger stimuli was faster than to happy stimuli. ERP results showed that: (1) In 175-275ms, which is the time window of P2 component, emotional prosody processing can be modulated by experiment tasks. In the first experiment of emotion identification task, there was valence effect and negative bias, and anger emotion evokes more positive P2 component, but in the second experiment of gender identification task, no valence effect was found; (2) In the late stage of evaluation processing and response preparation, anger stimuli evoked more positive wave than neutral and happy emotion stimuli in both experiments, no significant difference was found between happy and neutral prosody, indicating that the negative stimuli had stronger stimulate correlation, thus get much more in-depth processing. These results suggested that, there were different cognitive mechanisms of emotional speech processing, compared with the neutral stimuli, emotional prosody can be processed more effectively. And to some extent, this process can be modulated by experimental tasks, especially in the second stage. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effect of Events and Self-relevance on Gist/Detail Trade-off in Directed Forgetting of Negative Emotional Memory 2014, 37(4): 840-844.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3655KB) ( )   Emotional memory has been studied widely in recent years. Researchers not only focused on how to increase our memory, but also on how to forget the unwanted memory. Some investigators often used the directed forgetting paradigm to explore the forgetting of negative emotional memory, the directed forgetting refers that memory performance would be impaired under the forgetting instruction. In the typical directed forgetting paradigm, participants are presented with words, and are instructed either to remember or to forget these words or pictures, subsequently participants are asked to recall or recognize both to-be-forgotten words (F words) and to-be-remembered words (R words). The basic directed forgetting effect consists of a decrease in memory performance for to-be-forgotten words, combined with a recall advantage for to-be-remembered words. 　　Previous studies have found that the directed forgetting effect of emotional materials is different from that of neutral ones. In most cases, neutral materials showed significant directed forgetting effect, namely memory performance of to-be-forgotten words is lower than that of to-be-remembered words, but the results from directed forgetting of emotional materials were mixed. Furthermore, most previous researches on directed forgetting of emotional memory used simple emotional materials (such as words, pictures), complex emotional events are scarcely investigated. Therefore, we tried to use negative emotional videos that contain more emotional information as experimental materials, which are more similar to our real life events. Meanwhile, the materials used in previous directed forgetting studies are often irrelevant of each other. As is well know, if there existed relevance between the materials, participants were more likely to process them as a whole, which would prevent directed forgetting. Therefore, we use the list method directed forgetting paradigm to investigate the impact of content-relevance and self-relevance of events on directed forgetting. 　　In the present study, we conducted 2×2 mixed designs in 2 experiments. In experiment1, we examined the effect of content relevance between the negative emotional events on directed forgetting, moreover, we analysized the overall memory, gist memory and detail memory of negative emotional videos separately. The results of experiment1 showed that the content-relevance of events did not affect the directed forgetting, but when content was highly related between events, memory of gist and detail of to-be-remembered negative emotional events enhanced. In experiment 2, we examined the effect of self-relevant on directed forgetting of negative emotional memory, which found self-relevance affected the directed forgetting of negative emotion, namely directed forgetting appeared under the self-relevance condition; but directed forgetting disappeared under the self-irrelevance condition. Especially in experiment2, we found self-relevance took different roles in gist memory and detail memory, self-relevance enhanced detail memory, but decreased gist memory. 　　In conclusion, the results revealed that content-relevance eliminated the directed forgetting effect. However, self-relevance of events showed significant directed forgetting effect, self-irrelevance of events did not. Memory performance for gist and detail showed significant trade-off effect. Related Articles | Metrics

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Differences of Relevant Traits at Encoding and Retrieval from Double Perspective: An ERP Study 2014, 37(4): 823-828.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4094KB) ( )   Peeters(1983) made a distinction between other-relevant traits and possessor-relevant traits. ORTs denote unconditionally positive or negative consequences for persons in the social environment of the holder of the trait (e.g., honest, brutal), whereas PRTs denote unconditionally positive or negative consequences for the trait holder (e.g., happy, depressive). Most studies indicate that other-relevant traits (e.g., aggressive, honest) relate to other-interest, while possessor-relevant traits (e.g., depressive, intelligent) associate with self-interest. And it has been proved that other-relevant trait words had an advantage of attracting attention over possessor-relevant stimuli from the perspective of the recipient or the associates of the trait holder. This study aims to expand the processing of relevance dimension from the perspective of the possessor, as well as discriminate between the potential and the immediate recipient from the perspective of the recipient. The main contribution of the present research is to show that other-relevance and possessor-relevance could have their respective advantages from double perspective (the perspectives of the possessor and the recipient), but not other-relevance invariably dominates possessor-relevance. The present research adopted the study-test paradigm using event-related potentials. The data was collected from sixteen right-handed participants. There were three phases in each block: (1) The study phase required the participants to decide a). In the Recipient’s Perspective Condition, whether a trait of other persons, contacting with the participant, denoted larger consequences for persons in the social environment of the holder of the trait or for the trait holder; b).In the Possessor’s Perspective Condition, supposing that the participant have a certain trait, whether the trait denoted larger consequences for persons in the social environment of the participant or for the participant; c). In the Recipient’s Perspective Condition, whether a trait of other persons, contacting with the participant, denoted larger consequences for the participant or for the trait holder. (2)After the study phase, the participants were asked to subtract 3 from a 3-digit number shown on the screen. (3) The recognition test requested the participants to judge whether they had saw the presented word in the study phase and make a key-pressing response. The experimental results show that (1) Other-relevant trials significantly evoke larger amplitude than possessor-relevant trials at 150~800ms encoding stage and at 300~400ms during retrieval in both the Recipient and Possessor’s Perspective. (2) In the Possessor’s Perspective Condition, possessor-relevant trials evoke larger P600 amplitude than other-relevant trials during retrieval; (3) In the Recipient’s Perspective Condition, other-relevant trials denoting consequences for general persons in the social environment of the possessor significantly evoke larger amplitude during 300~800ms at encoding stage than those denoting consequences for self as the recipient. In conclusion, other-relevant traits capture more cognitive resources during encoding and at 300~400ms during retrieval, no matter which perspective evaluations are being made from. However, possessor-relevant traits indicate stronger recollection of episodic information during retrieval in the Possessor’s Perspective Condition. At last, other-relevant traits directing to the participants rather than general persons in the social environment of the possessor significantly reduce conflict of decision making at encoding stage. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Implementation Intention of Behavior: A Brief Introduction 2014, 37(4): 875-879.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3718KB) ( )   In order to reveal psychological mechanism between behavioral intention and actual behavior, we base the study on previous research results that introduced a concept of implementation intention, then combine the concept with characteristics of implementation intention and its relations with the traditional behavioral theory, the study establishes relationship between the behavior intention, implementation intentions and behavior, which provides a new angle of view for the actual behavior prediction and lays the foundation for further study of implementation intention theory. The results show that behavioral intention is the core predictor variable of the actual behavior, and has achieved fruitful results in various fields of study. However, many scholars found that behavioral intentions could explain only 25-30% of the behavior variance, couldn’t explain most of the variance, thus foreign academia put forward the concept of implementation intentions, which is the closest predictor variables of the actual behavior. By using literature research method reviews researches on the concept of implementation intention, related research and application research, and then we put forward the research deficiency and future research prospects. The results show:(1) Individuals with the action goal oriented, connected situational cues. Unfortunately, systematic exposition of implementation intention is relatively rare, most of the research is based on some areas of implementation intention, such as sports, fruit consumption, medical rehabilitation etc. Domestic scholars' research on implementation intention is very few. Taking "implementation intentions" as the keyword search in CNKI and WANFANG , there are about 8 documents about implementation intention, which shows the research area lacks conceptual framework. Therefore, systematically carding of correlative theories on behavioral intention is urgent, to promote research and application of behavioral science in more fields;(2) Under the condition of invariable in maintaining the intention, those with high-level perceived control are more likely to perform better than the average ones;(3) The major mediators of implementation intention are behavioral intention, self coordination, cooperation, reminder of plans, consciousness, personality and other variables;(4) For those with low self-efficacy, forming implementation intention information may be very important, because these variables and implementation intention were positively correlated with each other, further proof that implementation intention only has partial mediating effect on the relationship between intention and behavior. Implementation intention can help people reduce the distance between the intended target and the actual one, which serve as an active bridge that between intention and actual behavior ;(5) Those forming implementation intention have positive psychological states to overcome difficulties and achieve the established goals. Implementation intentions with consciousness, goal orientation and self-control have a more powerful promoting effect on behavior, showing strong executive willingness;(6) Implementation intention by plan characteristics asks an individual if a scenario is suited for goal-directed behavior, thus they will be in this context to behavior, which requires the individual imagine important scenarios and the desired behavior. The mental stimulation process that imagination brings may lead to enhance the stability of individual behavior in long-term memory. In short, implementation intention is a particularly important variable in behavioral science. Especially in China context, we should pay more attention on it in the related research. Related Articles | Metrics

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An Experimental Study on the Phonetic Processing and Orthographic Processing Deficit of the Chinese Reading Disability Qing LI 2014, 37(4): 803-808.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4393KB) ( )   Reading is a multi-component skill that includes single word recognition, prose reading ability, reading comprehension and decoding ability. Although the majority of young children acquire reading skills without difficulty, as many as one in six children will be ‘at risk’ of failing to read at a level that enables them to access their school curriculum. And identifying reading failure in young children may help to prevent not only later educational underachievement but also the development of behavioral and emotional problems. Developmental dyslexia, broadly defined as a difficulty in learning to read and spell despite adequate intelligence and educational opportunity, is one of the most common childhood learning disabilities affecting approximately 5-10% of school-age children worldwide. Phonological processing (phonological awareness, rapid naming speed, and phonological memory) is known to underlie dyslexia, at least in English, but more recent theoretical propositions have suggested that the effects of phonological processing are likely universal. A fascination with comparing reading and mathematics achievement in Chinese language for children in China, and native speakers of English in USA has continued for some time in the history of developmental psychology. One of the earliest empirical studies compared the cognitive performance and academic achievement of Japanese, Chinese, and American children (Stevenson, etc., 1985). Obviously Chinese and Japanese children have a non-alphabetic orthography, and equally obviously significant cultural differences exist between American children and the other two groups. Chinese children surpassed Japanese and American children in reading scores; and both Chinese and Japanese children obtained higher scores in mathematics than the American children. Based on the above background, the author used the self-designed and recomposed linguistic programs in order to investigate the characteristics and differences of phonological processing and orthographic processing among children with dyslexia (DYS), grade 5 chronological age (CA) controls and grade 3 reading level (RL) controls. The results indicated that the DYS group performed significantly poorer than the CA and RA groups on both measures of phonological awareness and the orthographic processing; the DYS group performed poorer than the CA group but comparably to the RA group on both measures of rapid naming and phonological memory. As a result, among the Chinese developmental dyslexic children, the phonological awareness and orthographic processing deficit were the two major deficits and the developmental delay might result in the poor performance on measures of rapid naming and phonological memory. Meanwhile, the amount of dyslexic children with phonological awareness and orthographic processing deficits outweighed the ones with other deficits. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Neural Mechanism of Framing Effect 2014, 37(4): 867-874.  Abstract ( )   PDF (6085KB) ( )   A central tenet of rational decision-making is logical consistency across decisions, regardless of the manner in which available choices are presented. This assumption, known as invariance, which is a fundamental axiom of normal decision-making theory, is challenged by a wealth of empirical data. Kahneman and Tversky originally described this deviation from rational decision-making, which they termed as the framing effect. Framing effect refers to the phenomenon that people respond differently to the same problem with different but objectively equivalent descriptions, which is a hot area of research for behavior decision-making. Researchers put forward a series of terms to distinguish different kinds of valence framing effects, such as risky choice framing effect, attribute framing effect and goal framing effect. At present, advanced noninvasive neuroimaging techniques, like fMRI allow researchers to directly observe brain activities while subjects are finishing framing tasks, which contributed greatly to our understanding of brain mechanisms of framing effect. Results from neuroimaging indicate framing effect may be a joint result of emotional processing and cognitive processing. Furthermore, emotional processing is controlled by amygdala, while anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) play dominant roles in cognitive processing. PFC may incorporate inputs from the amygdala, which represents the motivational value of choices. This allows PFC to integrate and evaluate the incentive value of predicted outcomes in order to guide future behavior. Findings from various studies support a model in which the OMPFC evaluates and integrates emotional and cognitive information, thus underpinning more rational (i.e., description-invariant) behavior. Although neuroimaging data show an association between amygdala and the framing effect, this correlation does not imply causation. A lesion study found that framing effect persisted even in the patients who had bilateral amygdala lesions, indicating a complementary systems in generating framing effect. Here, we purpose that insula may partly contribute to the persistence of framing effect found in bilateral amygdala lesions patients. Results from different studies also suggest that functions of ACC and PFC in framing effect may vary by different context or frame type. Specifically, an fMRI study found participants reveal framing effect with activation in PFC when frames involve life-death decision problem. Others showed that PFC and ACC might partly contribute to framing effect rather than resist it when using different types of frames as experiment stuff. They found participants were susceptible to framing, and the levels of activity in ACC and PFC are linear related. Besides, results from lateralization showed that framing effect could be influenced by different thinking styles of brain hemispheres. Specifically, a significant framing effect could be found when right, but not left, hemisphere processing was initially enhanced. The results supported differential processing of contextual information, which could be regarded as the best explanation of lateralization on framed information. When it is presented to the right-contextual hemisphere, a significant effect of framing would be found; but when the same messages were presented to the left-inferential hemisphere, little or no framing effect would emerge. In order to get a full understanding of faming effect, further researches are expected to integrate neural mechanisms and theory explanations, explore its domain specificity and its origin. Related Articles | Metrics

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Interaction between Location-based and Semantics-based Unconscious Priming Effects 2014, 37(4): 797-802.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4240KB) ( )   Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition, even under the unconsciousness. Previous studies found that unconscious information is not only able to get themselves a greater degree of processing, but also for its position in space could evoke attention, which produced location-based priming effect. Studies have also found that unconscious information is not only able to get the low-level characteristics processing, but also get the high-level semantics processing. So far, almost all previous studies focused on the different attributes of stimuli in unconscious information processing, separately. Such as location, size, shape, and semantics. But in order to examine directly whether they have the same underlying mechanisms and how they possibly interact in contributing to attentional or response bias, we need to use cue-target paradigm and co-vary the spatial location and semantic properties of stimuli simultaneously, we aimed at investigating the interaction between location-based and semantics-based unconscious priming effects. The two experiments used essentially the same design and stimuli, with two within-subject factors designating the relations between the cue and the target. The first factor was whether the cue was ipsilateral or contralateral to the target (i.e., cue-target location correspondence or cue validity) and the second factor was whether semantic consistency of the cue was the same as or different from the semantic consistency of the target. The cue and the target were four digits, 3, 4, 6 and 7. In some trials the prime was congruent with the target (both numbers fell on the same side of 5), and in other trials it was incongruent (one number being larger than 5, and the other being smaller; Fig. 1). In Experiments 1, subjects were required to press a press a response key with one finger if the target was on the left side, with the other finger if the target was on the right side. In Experiments 2, we asked subjects to perform a simple semantic categorization task on the target numeral. Subjects were asked to press a response key with one finger if the target was larger than 5, and with the other finger if the target was smaller than 5. The presentation of the cue and the target on the ipsilateral and contralateral sides and the combination of the same or different frequencies as cues and targets were completely balanced. We found that there were priming effects based on the location, when the location attributes of stimuli associated with the experimental task demands, regardless of whether semantic properties of stimuli were same; However, when the semantic properties of stimuli associated with the experimental task demands, there were the interaction between location-based and semantics-based unconscious priming effects, that when priming items were different with the position of the target items, there were semantic priming effects in semantic discrimination task; while priming items were same as the location of target items, there were inhibitory tendency in semantic discrimination task. These results suggested that, the interaction between location-based and semantics-based unconscious priming effects were only appeared in discrimination task, but not in location task. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of different delay tests on Vividness of emotional memory 2014, 37(4): 857-861.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3226KB) ( )   Vividness, often defined as the amount of perceptual or sensory detail, has been the autobiographical memory property studied most in emotional memories. A growing body of evidences suggests that a primary way by which emotion modulates memory is by intensifying the recollective experience—that is, the subjective vividness of the memory. Emotion boosts memory accuracy to an extent, but it affects the subjective sense of recollection even more. Vividness of emotional memory can help guide our actions. If we are unsure about a memory, we may take additional time to search our memory or look for additional cues before acting. However, if we are highly confident in our memory, our subsequent actions are more likely to be quick and decisive. The present research asks how emotion enhances the subjective sense of recollection？ One method for testing the belief that emotion enhances the recollection of details is to collect subjective reports of “remembering” during recognition. In the remember-know paradigm, participants study some materials and are then given a recognition test during which they distinguish “old” responses that involve recollection (i.e., “remembered” stimuli) from those that do not (stimuli they “know” were studied). Recent studies indicate that the proportion of “remembered” judgments to emotionally arousing stimuli is elevated in comparison with neutral stimuli, which suggests arousal enhancing the vividness of emotional memory. Other researchers challenged this conclusion with receiver operating characteristic curve data, and they found emotion increases subjective reports of “remembering”, which is due to response bias differences. We suggest the remembering is enhanced by valence depending on high arousal. To confirm the hypothesis, an experiment was conducted. Before the experiment, 32 undergraduates who did not participate in the following experiment rated the familiarity, complexity, arousal and valence of pictures (pictures from CAPS) on nine–scale, and their EMG, HR and SCR data were recorded by ProComp. In the present experiment 63 undergraduate participants were instructed to study 90 pictures .They were 30 neutral nonarousing pictures(M valence= 5.14, M arousal=2.62; M familiarity=5.37, M complexity=5.54), 30 negative arousing pictures(M valence= 3.10, M arousal=6.10; M familiarity=5.34, M complexity=5.75), and 30 positive arousing pictures(M valence= 6.30, M arousal=6.23; M familiarity=5.31, M complexity=5.61). The main effects of emotion on EMG and HR data, and SCR data of positive and negative pictures were worse than neutral nonarousing pictures. There was a fixation for 0.5 seconds on screen, and then pictures were shown one at a time for 2 seconds each in the middle of the computer screen. Immediately, one week, two weeks, or three weeks delay following the presentation of the study list, participants made recognition judgments for 180 test pictures (half studied and half new). For each picture participants called “old,” they were asked to make a remember–know judgment. Study and test sequences were randomly ordered for each participant. Remember response rates were submitted to an analysis of repeated measuring variance with emotionality of the pictures (negative and arousing, neutral, positive and arousing) and study-test delay time (Immediately, one week, two weeks, and three weeks). The main effects of study-test delay time were significant, F (3, 59) =3.55, p<.05. Participants claimed to remember more details of having studied negative and positive stimuli than neutral stimuli. The main effects of emotion were significant, F (2,118) =3.99, p<.05, which showed the enhanced remembering was much more by the emotional stimulus than neutral one. The interaction of emotionality of the pictures and study-test delay time was significant, F (6,118) =5.46, p<.01. On different study-test delay time, Remember response rate of positive arousing pictures declined from slowly to quickly, and then slowly. Remember response rate of negative arousing pictures declined from quickly to slowly. Remember response rate of neutral nonarousing pictures declined quickly. Above all, emotional memory is more vivid, and vividness of emotional memory is enhanced by valence depending on high arousal. Related Articles | Metrics

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Can cold joke make people cold?——The relationship between temperature perception and emotional experience of cold jokes Han-Lin WANG 2014, 37(4): 829-833.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3715KB) ( )   Three experiments were designed to explore the relationship between an emotional experience produced by reading a special humor – cold jokes and the lower temperature perception. The first experiment used 2 (cold joke / general joke) x 2 (higher / lower temperature picture) within-group design. Through recording participants’ eye movements, the influence on attentional biases of different temperature pictures caused by reading different texts were investigated. Experiment two used 2 (cold joke / general joke) x 2 (neutral \ positive facial affective pictures) mixed design to test the relationship between different jokes and different emotions. Experiment three using the implicit association test (IAT) to explore implicit association between higher / lower temperature concept and positive / neutral emotions. The results show that: (1) after reading cold jokes, participants’ total fixation on lower temperature pictures is longer than that on higher temperature pictures, which suggests that the comprehension of cold jokes can promote the perceptual processing for lower temperature pictures; (2) after reading cold jokes, the speed of judging neutral facial affective pictures is faster than that of judging positive facial affective pictures, indicating that the comprehension of cold jokes can induce a sort of emotion similar to the neutral emotion; (3) both of lower temperature concepts - neutral emotion and higher temperature concepts - positive emotion has a significant implicit relationship. Overall, the comprehension of cold jokes can prime the concepts about lower temperature, which indicates that to some extent, cold joke can make people "feel cold". According to the embodied cognition, the relationship between body and cognition is a kind of interaction. Therefore, we suggest that comprehension of cold joke is a cognitive activity, while the effect of priming lower temperature perception induced by cold jokes reflects a sensuous change in body, the comprehension can lead to the perceptual priming effects, which supports the point of embodied cognition. What’s more, the emotional feeling induced by reading the cold joke is similar to neutral emotion. As it’s shown in IAT, there is a close implicit association between this specific emotion and the concept of lower temperature. However , this kind of relationship needs to be further studied. Related Articles | Metrics

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Three Psychological Mechanisms and Their Influences CHENG Nian 2014, 37(4): 1008-1015.  Abstract ( )   PDF (6130KB) ( )   Power refers to the ability to control valued resources and outcome of others, which is evolved for helping groups attain important goals, improving social cooperation, and promoting collective interests. However, instead of wielding power for the greater good, powerholders might also be tempted to use power in self-serving ways. To explore what causes the powerholders to act in ways that go for/against the fundamental goals of social power has attracted much attention in field of psychology. Recently, it was identified that power was not only a structural variable, a property of social relationship but also a psychological property of the individual. Once the cue relevant to power appeared, the psychological state of experiencing power would be activated. On the basis of these findings, results of studies further demonstrated that there were three psychological processes underlying the effects of experiencing power, they are, 1) approach system, which was a motive system to regulate behavior related to sex, food, safety, achievement and social attachment; 2) psychological distance, which referred to a subjective experience that something was close or far away from the self, here, and now; and 3) illusory control, which was defined as the belief that one had the capability to influence outcomes that were beyond their control. In the present paper, first we reviewed how the three psychological mechanisms of power (approach system, psychological distance and illusory control) affected the powerholders’ cognition, emotion and motivation as well as their judgment, decision making and behaviors separately. Then we analyzed how each psychological process and its influence went for/against the fundamental goals of social power briefly. The activated approach system guided powerholders to change their focus of attention flexibly and act in a risk-seeking fashion. Further, the activated approach system led powerholders to be more sensitive to information relevant to rewards and helped them to pursue goals associated with the rewards. However, the reward approaching was found to be more likely to tempt the powerholders to use power for personal interests at the expense of others. Experiencing power enlarged psychological distance from others. As a result, construals of powerholders became more abstract. The abstract thinking improved complex decision making and creativeness of powerholders by integrating information to extract the gist, detecting patterns and relationships in complex situations and generation of new ideas. Psychological distance also increased stereotyping and prejudice, consequently, biased the social judgments of powerholders, played a negative role on cooperation and collective interests. Experiencing power initiated illusory control of individuals. Illusory control was found a mediator of the relationship between the experience of power and self-esteem, optimism as well as action in goal pursuit. Illusory control was also found to encourage powerholders to overestimate the importance of themselves, but nevertheless the overestimation is associated with errors in decision making by reducing advice taking. Finally, we analyzed the relationship between the three psychological processes of power and proposed that illusory control possibly was the central mechanism for power experiencing; it may be a mediator of power experiencing and reward approach as well as a mediator of power experiencing and psychological distance. We also suggest that future research should pay attention to the potential factors (e.g., motivation) which may activate or suppress the psychological mechanisms of power. We hope this work could make contributions to limitation of power from the psychological perspective. Related Articles | Metrics

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On B. Libet’s Theory of Consciousness 2014, 37(4): 1016-1023.  Abstract ( )   PDF (6021KB) ( )   B. Libet is a pioneering neuroscientist in the experimental research field of human consciousness and free will, and his distillate of thought of all his life in consciousness studies can be found in his book named Mind time: The temporal factor in consciousness, which was written in his later years. His most well-known work is his experimental research on free will and his interpretation of the experimental results, but the core of all his works consists in the discovery of time factor in consciousness—that is, time-on theory of awareness —and its rich implications. His research on free will has arisen partly from the time-on theory of awareness. B. Libet started his consciousness studies from the fundamental problem of "how are brain activities correlated with conscious experiences or how do they give rise to conscious experiences?" In deepening into the problem, B. Libet expanded his research into main five subject matters, including: (1) epistemological principles in consciousness studies; (2) how to define the phenomenal nature of consciousness; (3) time mechanism of consciousness; (4) free will; (5) a solution to the "hard problem" of consciousness. In terms of the integration and completeness of investigation of consciousness, B. Libet’s works is unique and distinct, especially in the empirical positivity and predictability. For experimental approach to the problem of how to study the relationship between the brain and conscious experience, B. Libet set out two epistemological principles that must be followed: the introspective report as the operational criterion and no a priori rules for mind-brain relationship. Based on the experimental discovery of time factor in consciousness, B. Libet proposed a time-on theory of consciousness, and elucidated the widespread impact of time factor on human mental functions. The time-on theory has three simple components: (1)To produce a conscious awareness of sensory stimulus, appropriate brain activities must proceed for a minimum duration of about 500 msec (when the event is near threshold). (2)The appearance of a conscious experience has an all-or-nothing character. That is, there is no reportable conscious awareness of an event even if the appropriate brain activities persist for as much as 90 percent of the 500 msec required for actual threshold awareness. (3) although when these same brain activities have durations shorter than those required for the production of awareness, they could be involved in producing an unconscious mental function without awareness. Partly based on the time factor in consciousness, B. Libet made a series ingenious experiments of the sequence of freely voluntary act, and gave an account of the results of those experiments. He then made a conclusion that the volitional process is initiated unconsciously, the conscious will could decide to allow the volitional process to go to completion, resulting in the motor act itself, in other words, the conscious will could block or “veto” the process, so that no motor act occurs. B. Libet conceived conscious experience as mental field, proposing a conception of CMF (conscious mental field) so as to address and solve the problem of unity and causality of conscious experiences. Related Articles | Metrics

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Review on the Theories of Subject Performed Task Effect in Action Memory Lijuan Wang li guangzheng 2014, 37(4): 998-1001.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3066KB) ( )   It is commonly established that simple action phrases, such as “open the book” or “break the tick”, were retained better when participants were instructed to perform the actions themselves than they learned the phrases by listening or reading. The excellent memory performance for subject-performed tasks (SPTs), compared to verbal tasks (VTs), has been called the SPT effect or enactment effect. Although a great many of researches had focused on the enactment effect as well as four theories had been proposed to explain the enactment effect, there was no unitary model to explain the empirical findings. The purpose of this article was to present the development of the four explanations on action memory and to address the enactment effect from the perspective of integrating the process procedures as well as the process system. The first theory was the nonstrategic theory. The researchers proved that action memory might be mediated by automatic processes. However, as the research moved along, critical words were put forward against the nonstrategic view. Now most researchers considered that the pop-out mechanism contributes to the free recall in SPT. Next, researchers put forward the multimodal view which considered the visual modality, the auditory modality, the tactual mode, even the olfactory as well as gustatory modes might be involved in specific SPTs. This multimodal notion was later extended a dual code view which stated that physical properties of SPT were encoded non-strategically, whereas the verbal components were encoded strategically. However, the argument of the dual code hypothesis by the proposers appeared contradictory results. So, most researches concentrated on the multimodal view other than the dual code hypothesis for the SPT effect. Then, the third theory - the motor encoding view was proposed by Engelkamp and Zimmer who argued that the memory traces were enriched by motor components in addition to verbal, visual, and conceptual components. The motor encoding was the key for enactment effect. As research continued, most researches demonstrated there may be a motor system for handling the motor information. Finally, we analyzed the episodic integration view which differed quite radically from the above three theories discussed. According to this view, the encoding of action events was wholly strategic and enactment increased the degree of self-involvement for subjects. Enactment increases the integration in three ways : (1) a better integration between the environment and the subject; (2) within-event integration; (3) between-events integration. Enactment encoding was considered the “glue” that cemented the components of actions into a memory unit or into closely connected memory units. In summary, we analyzed the theories and found that the nonstrategic view as well as the episodic integration view mainly concentrated on the memory process procedures, and the motor encoding theory as well as the multiple codes view mainly focused on the objects of the processing. Both of them paid attention to the one and ignored the other. So integrating the process procedures and the process objects may give us a window to explore the processing mechanism of SPT effect in action memory. Related Articles | Metrics

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A review of cultural differences of trust: perspectives and methods 2014, 37(4): 1002-1007.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4520KB) ( )   Trust is a complex social and psychological phenomenon which the related studies emerged in 1960s. With the development of globalization and the cultural integration, the interpersonal trust among different ethnic individuals who have different cultural backgrounds becoming more and more complex. Researchers began to focus on the role of culture on trust building in their studies recently. Some researchers believed that trust is a cultural embedding phenomenon. The establishing and maintaining of it depends on the particular social structures and cultural context. The purpose of this article is to describe and summarize the studies of trust, which includes the study perspective sand methodologies. We hope it can deep our understanding of cultural differences on trust and provide some new ideas for the future research. Trust is mostly defined as a positive expectation toward another person’s behavior though there is no a universally accepted definition. Individuals of different cultures display significant differences in the general trust level, the way of establishment of trust, type of trust and the repair of trust. Generally speaking, the western have a higher general trust than the Eastern. In trust building, the Western always adopt the calculation rules and evaluating the ability of the partner which can promise their benefit maximizing. However, predictions, reasonable and transformation are always as the main way in Eastern which included the factor of sentiment. Different model of extraction cues; different social and cultural context, cultural norms and cultural transition are the main reason which lies of the difference. The method of combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative data were always used in the cross-cultural study. Specifically, questionnaires, the card sorting and in-depth interview combination and "board game" approaches are the most popular ones. These methods can avoid the bias of the understanding of trust and to further gain meaningful results. Though the researchers had paid attention to the influence of culture difference on trust, most of them are focused on the description of it and few of the indigenous study, the specific culture icons of trust. Several directions of the future studies: 1) embodied the indigenous concept of trust; there is different meaning of trust in difference culture that the indigenous concept of trust is necessary in the relevant studies. 2) To explore the specific culture icons in trust building such as face, Renqing, Guanxin in China 3) the influence of cultural transition on trust which mean that the changeable of trust in different culture context from the longitude perspective and 4) the mixing trust of people with different cultural background with the globalization. Related Articles | Metrics

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Hoarding Disorder and its Correlative Factors 2014, 37(4): 993-997.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3636KB) ( )   Hoarding disorder is defined as the excessive acquisition of and failure to discard possessions that are useless or of limited value, living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which these spaces are designed, significant distress or impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding. These symptoms impair functioning or pose significant health and safety risks, as well as distress to those who hoard and those living with or near them. In some hoarding cases, the acquired items prevents the normal use of space to accomplish basic activities, such as cleaning, cooking, moving through the house, and sleeping. Interference with these functions can make hoarding a dangerous problem, putting people at risk for fire, poor sanitation, falling (especially children and elderly people), and health risk. Indeed, severe hoarding is a serious public health concern that may result in precarious living situations, in which the hoarded items intrude on the available living space within the home or create a toxic environment where the residents are exposed to an array of potentially toxic materials, for example, dust, rotting foods, bacteria, pollen, and so on. In short, pathological hoarding can represent a profound public health burden in terms of poor physical health, occupational impairment, and social service utilization. It also has a substantial impact on the family members and those who living near hoarder. Hoarding is different from obsessive-compulsive disorder, compulsive hoarding, organic hoarding, and compulsive buying. By differentiate and analyze of these concepts and issues that can make us more accurately grasp the hoarding disorder behavior. This article focuses on some of the key issues pertaining to pathological or compulsive hoarding, discuss terminological issues and describe the current status of hoarding in the existing classification systems，then identify and discuss key issues that are specifically relevant to DSM-V. Given that research on compulsive hoarding has increased exponentially over the last decade, and that it may represent a major threat to public health. This present paper introduces psychological mechanisms of hoarding, including cognition, emotion, personality, and brain structure. Then the paper introduces some influential factors of hoarding, including gender, age, and environment. Finally the issues deserved further research and outline. More recently, the hoarding disorder has been included in DSM-V. The proposed DSM-V criteria include three criteria that describe the symptoms (1, 2 and 3), one that defines the level of distress or interference (4), and two that are exclusion criteria (5 and 6). The proposed DSM-V criteria for hoarding disorder will help to determine individual who persistent difficulty discarding hoarded items, and give he or she help and intervention. Hoarding disorder has been studied by many scholars, but these studies are insufficient to make people accurately grasp the psychological mechanism of the hoarding disorder. Even some of findings seem opposed to each other, these inconsistent findings may be a variety of causes. But, anyway, which means that academic world should focus on related issues to make more comprehensive, depth, and accurate research. In addition, the localization study of the hoarding disorder may be a unique discovery and significance. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Intervening Variable of the Proactive Coping and the Positive Emotions Between the Social Support and the Depression 2014, 37(4): 980-984.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3474KB) ( )   With the rise of the positive psychology, the researchers have been gradually changing their main emphasis of their studies into the individual positive quality, in which the proactive coping and the concerning of the positive emotions in academics have formed. The proactive coping is a kind of action, which was taken before the advent of pressure. It means a series of efforts of an individual who wants to challenge him or seeking self-development. Studies in the past have found that the social support can not only be able to improve the individual’s positive emotions, but also can improve the positive emotions through the proactive coping. Frequently experiencing of the positive emotions may reduce the possibility of suffering from the depression, and that is the exact goal the psychologists want to achieve. Discussing the interaction mechanism of the social support acting upon the depression, this essay lays more stress on investigating the mediating effect of the proactive coping as well as the positive emotions in this model. This research adopts the longitudinal study design method, and takes use of Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS), Proactive Coping Subscale (PCS), Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). The research investigated 181 students from two universities in Beijing, and testing at two time points——at the beginning of the new term and close to the end of the term——time interval for nearly four months. This research took use of Path Analysis to study the influence of the social support acting upon the depression of the students. This paper also discussed the function of the proactive coping and the positive emotions in the whole procedure. The study shows: the proactive coping, the social support and the positive emotions have remarkable relations with the depression of college students. Partially, the proactive coping mediates the relationship of the social support and the positive emotions. In addition, the positive emotions is a mediator between both the social support and the depression, also a mediator between the proactive coping and the depression. In conclusion, the proactive coping is regarded as an intervening variable between the social support and the positive emotions at Time 1.Therefore, with sound social support, we should positively prepare and enhance appropriate proactive coping strategies so as to further strengthen the positive emotions. Besides, the positive emotions at Time 1 is an intervening variable between the social support and the proactive coping at Time 1 and the depression at Time 2.We should encourage individuals actively participate in daily activities, which could enhance their positive emotional experience. In this way, students will effectively prevent depression. Related Articles | Metrics

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Fairness Decision Making in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Theory-of-mind and self-other emotional recognition 2014, 37(4): 985-992.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5235KB) ( )   Maintaining fairness and equity on resource distribution is essential in preserving social concordance. Fairness can be interpreted as being equal in distributions, in consequences or in probabilities. For instance, fairness is present when two individuals do not differ in their right to an object, and both will receive equal benefits from it. Since having erudite appreciation of both mental states and emotional allow use to predict greater use of social situated reasoning, having comprehensive understanding of emotion recognition, a fundamental skill to many social processes and of Theory-of-Mind (ToM), an ability to recognize self-other mental states are essential mechanisms which enhance our understanding of reasons behind human fair allocation and decision making. Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopment disorders characterized by encumbrance in ToM development, which occasioned in impairments in their fairness decision-making. Additionally, although young ASD children display knowledge and expressions of simple emotions; the high function ASD population often desire to engage in social-emotional interactions with peers, eventually they will be less likely in exhibiting response to social emotions; which exacerbates based on older ASD children and adults’ degenerated performance on emotional recognition tasks. Therefore, it is important to examine the role of ToM and emotion recognition in ASD children through empirical approaches. Using the Ultimatum Game (UG), an economical experiment game in which two participants interact and allocate a quantity of resources; the first player proposes a division for the reserve, and the second player can either choose to accept (getting the share) or to reject (neither player obtains anything) the proposition. We investigated the relationship between ToM, self-other emotional recognition and decision making among 29 ASD, 30 developmental disability, 30 intelligence matched and 27 age matched children. The participants will act as an accepter or a distributor interacting with the experimenter, taking turns at either allocating or receiving resources, meanwhile reporting self-other emotion recognition via verbal or non-verbal deportments selecting emotion visage cartoon prints before making decision. Since the age matched children’s basic performances (verbal ability, general intelligence and ToM) significantly surmount the other groups, their data were not further examined. The results suggest that ASD children are more likely than developmental disability and intelligence matched children in accepting extreme small offers (allocations of 2:8 and 3:7). ASD children with intact ToM development are equipped with basic performance and understanding of fairness: ToM and self emotional recognition is significantly correlated and could predict particiapant’s decision making, when ASD children faced unfair distributions (allocations of 1:9, 2:8 and 3:7), the children who passed the ToM task were able to reject the proposer’s offer, the children who reported more negative self-emotions were also more likely to reject the offer. Being able to report self-emotion and having an intact ToM is significantly correlated and plays a substantial role in prediction of ASD children’s UG decision making, this study advocates the importance of examining ToM development and emotional recognition in real-life fairness decision making scenarios in future studies. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Differences between College Students’ Implicit and Explicit Cue Preferences in Romance Choice:An Eye-Movement Study 2014, 37(4): 902-906.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3417KB) ( )   The study aims to explore the difference between implicit and explicit cue preference in romance choice in college students. Based on interview and questionnaire research, the first study selects fourteen cues that regarded as important in mate decision and choose 38 males and 52 females to make important ratings of these cues in order to make a comparision between different sexes of which one counts more. The second study chooses eight most important cues respectively of different genders, and makes a distinction of the important cue rating between implicit and explicit cue preferences attained by eye tracker and self-reported survey, which used 21male college students and 24 ones who has a romantic relationship sustained above six months. The first study shows there is significant differences in cues below of distinct gender: behavior, mastery, character, profession, economic level, family and education background and. The second one indicated notable rating difference in some cues of importance in different genders. What’s more, there was significant difference of cue rating in mean duration time and cue importance when females choose their heterosexual partner, while for subjects in different genders, it existed notable differences in some cues in cue rating between average pupil size and implicit cue importance. In all, the result shows that the notable difference between college students’ implicit and explicit cue preferences in romance choices when choosing heterosexual partners of different genders. Meanwhile, some implicit index such as average duration time and pupil size can be considered as important figures in illustrating implicit attitude in romantic decision. Related Articles | Metrics

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Predictive relations between social disinterest and peer relationships among adolescents: Moderating effects of academic achievement Yoko Zhou 2014, 37(4): 894-901.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5831KB) ( )   Abstract: Social withdrawal refers to the process whereby children remove themselves from opportunities for peer interaction and frequently display solitary behaviors in social contexts. The distinction can be further made between shyness, characterized by the internal conflict between the desire to affiliate (i.e., social approach motivation) and social fear and wariness (i.e., social avoidance motivation), and social disinterest, which is thought to reflect a non-fearful preference for solitary activities. Whereas there has been considerable research on the development of shyness in childhood, social disinterest remains relatively understudied, particularly in older children. Empirical findings in Western societies indicated shyness and social disinterest appear to have quite different implications for children’s socio-emotional and school adjustment. While shyness has demonstrated a consistent link with difficulties in peer relationships and other social and school problems, social disinterest appears to be a comparatively benign form of social withdrawal. However, the significance of social functioning may be affected by cultural context. Evidences from the studies conducted in China indicated that social disinterest was associated with social, school and psychological problems. The purpose of this one-year longitudinal study was to examine the moderating effects of academic achievement on predictive relations between social disinterest and later peer relationships difficulties among early adolescents. Participants were 787 children (ages 10-14 years) in an urban area in P. R. China. Assessments of social disinterest, peer acceptance, peer victimization and academic achievement were obtained from peer nominations and school records. Results indicated that social disinterest negatively predicted later peer acceptance, and positively predicted later peer victimization, while academic achievement positively predicted later peer acceptance, and negatively predicted later peer victimization. The predictive relations between social disinterest and later peer relationships difficulties were moderated by academic achievement. For low-achieving children, the associations between social disinterest and later peer relationships difficulties were much stronger than that for high-achieving children. The results indicate that academic achievement may be a buffering factor that serves to protect social disinterest children from developing social problems in some degree. Related Articles | Metrics

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Differences between Expert and Novice Teachers in Implicit Sequence Learning of Students' Classroom Expression Pictures 2014, 37(4): 912-919.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5753KB) ( )   References | Related Articles | Metrics

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Preliminary Study of the Characteristics of Children's Earliest Memories 2014, 37(4): 880-887.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5506KB) ( )   To explore Childhood amnesia phenomenon, the previous studies mostly investigated on western adults.However, in recent years, some cross-cultural studies and children studies discovered age and cultural factors have a significant effect on the boundary of childhood amnesia .Moreover, memory emotion was limited to be measured by emotional valence and emotional intensity, thereby restricting the discussion about the emotion mechanism of autobiographical memory. From the perspective of development, the study uses the single earliest memory method to investigate child-only’s childhood amnesia .Firstly, the research revised the single earliest memory method by referencing literature and conducting pre-interview. Then, the formal investigation used a revised interview approach, which investigated 60 students from grade 4 in primary school and grade 2 in middle school. The detailed procedures of interview are as follows.Firstly, the subject was introduced to the standard of memory, which stressed that the memories reported must be a specific memory and be able to remember. Secondly, the subject was required to report his/her earliest memory after taking a three-minutes recall. Meanwhile, he or she was also required to provide an estimate about his or her age of the earliest memory just recalled. After that, an opening question was introduced stating “ what did you feel like during the developing process of the whole event”. The last step is the examination of adjective check list. This survey is consisted of moral emotion words from Haidit’s Moral Emotion Model and other six common basic emotion words. After interview, the following step was coding the content of the interview. Coding methods are mainly based on the classic study. What worthwhile to be mentioned was the analysis of the emotional content in memory. Specifically, from the stage of the opening question, the content reported by the subject would be coded as positive, negative, neutral or mixed emotion. In addition to it, the words selected by the subject from adjective check list would be coded as the moral emotion and the basic emotion, which would be scored accordingly. The research results show as follow: (1) In general, gender differences and age differences of the children's earliest memory are not significant，apparently, they showed consistency.The mean age at the earliest memory across the entire sample is 41.15 months.（2）There are significant correlations between mentions of emotions and memory volume.( p<.001)（3）The basic emotion（M=1.46,SD=0.89）from earliest memory is significant higher than moral emotion（M=0.83,SD=1.02），t（59）=3.70，p<.001. (4) The percentages of moral emotions and mixed emotions in autobiographical memory,are 53.7% and 41.7% respectively. The finding suggests that Chinese children in urban at age of 9 years old already resemble adults. The high emergence frequency of moral emotion and mixed emotion in the earliest memory indicates understanding emotion possibly plays a key role in the further loss of early memory in the middle period of childhood. The development of emotional ability shall be further studied as the mechanism of the childhood amnesia. Related Articles | Metrics

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Electronic Media and Child Development：From the Perspective of Ecological Techno-subsystem Theory 2014, 37(4): 920-924.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3470KB) ( )   Electronics not only change the pattern of our life style, but also have an inevitable influence on the development of children as they are being used more and more often among children at very young age. Children and adolescents use electronics as the tools to learn, entertain, communicate and present. Many researches have paid attention to the impact of electronics use on child development. Cultivation theory, displacement theory, use-and-gratification theory, and ecological systems theory have been employed to interpret the impact of electronics use on child development. These theories try to interpret how electronics influence children’s cognition, emotion and the way they practice in society from different perspectives. In order to examine the effect of electronic media, we need to adopt more comprehensive theories. Ecological system theory emphasizes that children develop from the reciprocal transitions between the child and the broader environmental contexts in which a child is situated or operates. The ecological techno-subsystem, a dimension of the microsystem of ecological systems includes child interaction with both living (e.g. peers) and non-living (e.g. hardware) element of communication, information, and recreation technologies in immediate or direct environments. Empirical evidences have shown that the impact of media on children depends on three distinct but interrelated factors: attributes of the child; characteristics of the electronic media stimuli; and the varied environmental contexts surrounding the child’s media use. One central finding of studies to date is that the content delivered by electronic media is far more influential than the media themselves. Most studies find a small negative link between the total hours a child spends viewing TV and that child’s academic achievement. But when researchers take into account characteristics of the child, such as IQ or socioeconomic status, this link typically disappears. Content appears to be crucial. Viewing educational TV is linked positively with academic achievement; viewing entertainment TV is linked negatively with achievement. When it comes to particular cognitive skills, researchers have found that electronic media, particularly video games, can enhance visual spatial skills. Media exposure affects children’s social development. Children can learn about the nature and causes of different emotions from watching the emotional experiences of media characters and that they often experience empathy with those characters. Strong evidence shows that violent television programming contributes to children’s aggressive behavior. And a growing body of work indicates that playing violent video games can have the same harmful effect. Children’s susceptibility to media influence can vary according to their gender, their age, how realistic they perceive the media to be, and how much they identify with characters and people on the screen. Researches indicate that online communication is beneficial to children and adolescents，researchers propose rich-get-richer and social-compensation hypotheses to explain the different effect of online communication. Reaearchers may enrich our understanding the relationship between electronics use and children's development from research technique and content in future. Reaearchers should develop measurement approaches appropriate for capturing children’s media use in the digital age, the most effective approach will be to triangulate measurement techniques.Others could focuse on identifying the patterns of brain activation when children watching TV ,playing video games and so on , identifying whether using electronics in very early years could change the structure of the brain or change the patterns of brain activation with cognitive neuroscience perspective and techniques. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effect of Item Reward on the Allocation of Study Time: A Changing Process 2014, 37(4): 907-911.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3343KB) ( )   Abstract Knowing how to manage one’s own learning has become increasingly important in recent years. Allocation of study time is one of the important indicators that reflect how learners adjust and control their study and the decisions on study time allocation will influence the individual's learning efficiency and final performance directly. When we are trying to learn new materials, how do we allocate study time? And how do we decide the order in which to study the materials? Agenda-Based Regulation proposed by Ariel, Dunlosky and Bailey(2009), assumes that Learners develop an agenda on how to allocate time and use this agenda when selecting items for study. According to the ABR framework, learners’ allocation of study time is flexible, depending on their goals, task constraints, and any number of agendas could be constructed. The present study built a complex learning situation to explore the changing process of allocation of study time and the internal mechanism of the construction of agendas. 　　The purpose of the Experiment was to investigate the effect of item reward on item selection and self-paced study time in different learning stage under a certain time limit, and whether there existed a a process of weighing decision-making during the learning process. There were 40 college students taking part in the Experiment. They were asked to learn 30 noun-noun paired associates in Chinese. These items awarded different points ranging from 1 to 30 were present on one screen. All instructions were displayed on the computer screens. Participants were informed that each item was paired with a number (a point value), and that this number indicated how much the item was“worth”. They were told that the goal was trying to get as many points as possible, and were encouraged to maximize their score. Once the experiment began, participants could choose which values to study, and the associated word pair was then shown. Study time, and the choice to restudy words, was under the participant’s control during the 270 seconds study session. A timer indicating the amount of time remaining was displayed at the top of the screen during the task. At the end of the 270 seconds, participants would finish the associated recall test and they would recall as many words as they could from the list. Immediately following this recall period, participants were informed of their score for the list. Scores were calculated by summing the points associated with the word pairs participants successfully recalled. 　　This Experiment was conducted with a 3 (item reward: 1-10 point, 11-20 point, 21-30 point) ×9 (time range: a total of 270 seconds, every 30 seconds for a period of time) within subjects design. The experiment found: (1) study time increased with the points awarded for each item; (2) allocation of study time is a changing process, which can be divided into three learning stages. In the first stage, participants tended to select more high-value (21-30 point) items and devoted more of their study time to these items. In the second stage, participants transferred their attention to study the medium-value (11-20 point) items; in the last stage, participants selected more high-value items to review. In the experiment, selecting high-reward items would help participants to facilitate earning and meet their goal, so they tended to select the high-value items to study and allocate more time to these item. However, participants transferred their attention to study the medium-value items in the second learning stage when they had already known well about the high-value item through the previous study in the first stage, by which they could learn more items and erning as many points as possible. The results indicated that there existed a trade-off process in allocation of study time for learners and metacognitive monitoring has an impact on it during the whole process. When learners are in a complex learning situations, they need to face the difficulty of items, item reward and limitation of study time.They should weigh the importance of these factors and adjust the agenda that they have constructed to achieving task goals as efficiently as possible. The paper discussed around the changing process of allocation of study time and the internal mechanism of the construction of agendas. The findings of the study were in accordance with the agenda-based regulation model regarding the study time allocation. Study regulation is goal-oriented and learners will adjust their agenda to maximize the likelihood of obtaining their goals efficiently during the learning process. In addition, these results clarified the process of weighing decision-making and provided more evidence for the internal mechanism of the agenda construction of ABR framework. When the learning situation was complex, allocation of study time is a process of weighing decision-making and there existed a trade-off process for learners. The internal mechanism of agenda is the process of weighing, and decision-making are weighed in terms of the principle of achieving task goals as efficiently as possible. Related Articles | Metrics

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Effect of Childhood Abuse on Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy in College Students Jia-Hui WANG 2014, 37(4): 888-893.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4356KB) ( )   Childhood abuse is an important public health problem, which happened in all spaces. As the progress of social civilization, it has gradually become a hot issue in the field of child research. More and more scholars have paid widespread attentions to the field of childhood abuse. Childhood abuse often brings irreparable psychological trauma to children, resulting in personality, psychology and behavior disorder, affecting extensive unfavorable effects and hazards to the children’s mental health and growth. Moreover, this harm may last whole life of a person. The current researches about child abuse are principally focused on the methods of abuse prevention and intervention and on the harm of abuse. In terms of the harm of abuse, many scholars have researched the relationships between childhood abuse and some psychological natures about emotions, yet the relationship between childhood abuse and regulatory emotional self-efficacy has not got great concern and still has a long way to go. The idea of regulatory emotional self-efficacy (RESE), originated from Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, essentially refers to the sense of self-confident of an individual based on subjective evaluation to his/her emotion regulation abilities. The RESE plays a vital role when individuals meet various emotional events and need to manage their emotions. To some extent, it can ease emotional tension and maintain self-adjusting mechanism and can promote the development of mental health. Thus this paper tried to explore the relationship between childhood abuse and regulatory emotional self-efficacy in college students from the perspective of positive psychology. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form(CTQ-SF) and Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Questionnaire were administered to the sample consisting of 472 college students. The survey of CTQ-SF was manipulated retrospectively. Totally 450 questionnaires were valid. One normal group, as controls, was set up and composed of 43 college students who hadn’t been suffered from abuse in childhood. Three experimental groups were established, i.e. EAEN group(n=37) who had experienced emotional abuse accompanying emotional neglect, EAPN group(n=31) who had experienced emotional abuse accompanying physical neglect, and ENPN group(n=39) who had experienced emotional neglect accompanying physical neglect. The results showed that: (1) Relevance ratio of childhood abuse in college students was 47.1%. The incidences of physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect were 7.3%, 40.2%, 12.0%, 42.1%, and 41.3%, respectively. (2) Canonical correlation analysis suggested that the correlation between childhood abuse and regulatory emotional self-efficacy was moderate in college students. Canonical variables explained 34.5% of the variance in childhood abuse, 36.8% in regulatory emotional self-efficacy, with the redundancy indexes as 6.7 and 7.2 respectively. (3) EAEN and ENPN group were significantly higher than EAPN in perceived self-efficacy in managing anger/irritation(ANG). The controls were significantly higher than the three experimental groups in perceived self-efficacy in expressing positive affect(POS). These findings suggest that the college students who had experienced childhood abuse may have lower regulatory emotional self-efficacy. There may be moderate correlation between childhood abuse and regulatory emotional self-efficacy in college students. Related Articles | Metrics

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context-oriented approach in narrative research 2014, 37(4): 770-775.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4804KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

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The concepts, research fields and academic subject system in psychobiography Jian-Hong ZHENG 2014, 37(4): 776-782.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5658KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

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research on the personality of biographical subjects in different fields: the application of the psychobiographical research method Ji-Xia WU jie leng 2014, 37(4): 783-789.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5472KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

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returning to the alma master in remembrance and the life identity: alumni of st john's university in shanghai and their narratives Hsiang-Mei Chen 2014, 37(4): 790-796.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5578KB) ( )   Related Articles | Metrics

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Example Anchoring Effect in the Process of Interpersonal Emotional Forecasting Hai-Bin WANG 2014, 37(4): 930-935.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4654KB) ( )   Emotional forecasting refers to the prediction of the individual and others’ emotional state in the future. Large number of studies found that it is difficult to accurately predict future emotion and emotional forecasting bias often appear. Previous studies show that the forecasting future emotional usually built on the basis of past emotional experience or memory. However，extraction of emotional memory has gone wrong and thus emotional forecasting bias occur. In other words，people's emotional forecasting could be affected by emotional example of memory (example anchor). But in the past，the researches in this field only involve individual forecasting their own future emotion. In this study，by taking teachers forecasting students' emotions for example，the purpose of the two experiments is to examine whether there is example anchoring effect when it refers to interpersonal emotions forecasting. Firstly，we hypothesis that teachers’ memories of students' emotional response will affect the teachers to make prediction when teachers forecasting students’ emotions. Furthermore，we hypothesis that example anchoring does not necessarily guarantee emotional forecasting accuracy. Only when typical examples are extracted and teachers base typical examples on foresting anchor，teachers can make accurate emotional forecasting. Experiment 1，by using free recall paradigm 65 teachers participants (an average of 16.46 years teaching experience) forecasted the emotional reaction of the students in two typical educational scenarios of the public recognition and misconceptions students. Specifically，teachers were requested to freely recall the examples of the scenarios and then forecasted students’ emotions. After examples of students' emotional reactions were encoded，participants were divided into two groups including calm emotions example anchor and strong emotions example anchor. The experiment results confirmed the hypothesis: the more intense emotions of students in the example is，the more strong teachers foresting students’ emotion is，the lower teachers’ emotional forecasting accuracy is. Experiment 2，68 teachers participants (an average of 6.34 years teaching experience) were selected and two typical scenarios of positive expectations and caring students were selected. Through example priming paradigm we investigated example anchoring effect，the experimental results again confirmed the research hypotheses. The two experiments selected different typical educational scenarios and conducted different example anchor manipulation method. Consequently，the results are exactly the same: example anchoring effect indeed exist when it refer to the process of interpersonal emotional forecasting such as teachers’ forecasting students’ emotion. However，only typical example anchor can promote emotional foresting accuracy. Related Articles | Metrics

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Value Orientation and Social Distance Influenced Cooperation and Aggression in Decision-making: Evidences from Chicken Game 2014, 37(4): 962-967.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4006KB) ( )   Previous studies employing the social game tasks have demonstrated that human cooperation and aggression behavior were affected by the individual’s social value orientation, however the effect size of this impact was relatively low and was not stable. According to the behavioral dynamics view, our behavior was impacted by interaction of personality and social situation. Social distance is a kind of social situation, and was proved to affect our social cognition and behavior. However, it is still unclear how cooperation and aggression was modulated by social value orientation and social distance. In order to address this issue, we use the Chicken game to explore how social value orientation and social distance interactively impacted our social game behavior in the present study. Different social value orientation (Prosocial VS Proself) subjects were recruit, and were arranged to play the Chicken game with their friend and a stranger (lab assistants) through the networked computer. The percentage of selecting cooperation was entered into a 2 (SVO: Prosocial, Proself) ×2 (Social distance: Friend, Stranger) ANOVA test. The results indicated that the main effect of social distance was significant, that is, participant selected more cooperation to friend than to stranger. More important, there was significant interaction effect between SVO and Social distance. Test of the simple effect show that only Prosocial participants selected more cooperation to friend than to stranger, the cooperative percentage was not differ in Proself participants. The mean response time (RT) of selecting cooperation and aggression were entered into a 2 (SVO: Prosocial, Proself) ×2 (Social distance: Friend, Stranger)×2 (Selection strategy: Cooperation, Aggression) ANOVA test. There was significant interaction effect between SVO and Selection strategy, indicating that the mean RT of selecting cooperation was longer than the mean RT of selecting aggression in Prosocial participants, but not in Proself participants. In addition, for investigating the potential influence of outcome feedback to ongoing decision-making, we calculated the ratio of selecting cooperation and aggression associated with each kind of outcome. The result indicated that the feedback type affected the cooperation and aggression behavior, participant was more likely to select cooperation when the feedback indicating the opponent selected cooperation. In conclusion, the result of this study support that the human cooperation and aggression behavior were not simply influenced by social value orientation, probably were modulated by the interaction of social value orientation and other social situation, such as social distance. Related Articles | Metrics

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Servant Leadership and Employee Work Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Prosocial Motivation and the Moderating Role of Interactional Justice YUE ZHU 2014, 37(4): 968-972.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3616KB) ( )   As the current demand for more ethical, people-centered management, the interest in servant leadership should come as no surprise. Servant leadership, as proposed by Greenleaf (1977), is a leadership style that emphasizes the moral high ground of doing good to others now and into the future. Previous studies have demonstrated that servant leadership is positively related to followers’ job satisfaction and helping behavior. However, few of them have tested the psychological mechanism underlying these relationships, especially in Chinese context. Moreover, there is little research having considered the boundary condition under which servant leadership is effective. To fill these research gaps, this study proposed and examined a moderated mediation model of servant leadership in which prosocial motivational is a mediation mechanism and interactional justice is a moderation mechanism. Survey questionnaires were distributed among employees in five private companies located in Zhejiang Province. The final sample consists of 201 employees and 62 supervisors. The hypotheses on mediation and moderation were examined using hierarchical multiple regression. Further, the procedure developed by Preacher, Rucker and Hayes (2007) to assess moderated medication hypotheses. Results showed that servant leadership was positively related to follower job satisfaction and helping behavior, and prosocial motivation partially mediated these relationships. In addition, interactional justice moderated the relationship between servant leadership and followers’ prosocial motivation, such that the relationship was stronger when followers perceived higher level of interactional justice. Finally, moderated mediation analyses showed that prosocial motivation mediated the relationships between servant leadership and follower job satisfaction and helping behavior only when interactional justice was high. This study contributed to servant leadership literature in several ways. First, this study addressed the generalizability of servant leadership within China. The positive relationships between servant leadership and follower job satisfaction and helping behavior in the Chinese sample are consistent with the findings obtained from Western society. Second, from a social learning perspective, this study examined the mediation role of followers’ prosocial motivation in the effect of servant leadership on both follower job satisfaction and helping behavior. The finding added to our understanding of the process through which servant leaders exert their influence on followers. Finally, this study extended the existing knowledge on the effectiveness of servant leadership by clarifying its boundary condition. Results showed that interactional justice moderated the indirect effects of servant leadership on job satisfaction and helping behavior through prosocial motivation. The findings highlight the values of integrating research on servant leadership and justice, suggesting that servant leadership and interactional justice are most effective collectively. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Influence of Temporal Discounting on Consumers' Evaluation for Brand's Failure and its Moderator Variables 2014, 37(4): 957-961.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3603KB) ( )   This paper aims to help companies to develop the effective strategies about repairing brand image and brand relationship. Our theoretical framework was based upon the premise that with the extension of temporal distance, the evaluation for brand’s failure was gradually enhanced, but self-pertinence would undermine this effect. In experiment one, 3(temporal distance: last week, two years ago and four years ago) × 2(types of brand's failure: one is about functional defects, the other is about harming health) between subjects experimental design was conducted. It revealed that the main effect of temporal distance and types of brand's failure were significant, f(2, 174)= 12.299, p< .001, η2= .124, f(1, 174)=60.074, p< .001, η2= .257, the interaction between temporal distance and types of brand's failure was significant, f(2, 174)= 9.649, p< .001, η2= .100. in scenarios of brand's failure which is about functional defects, the main effect of temporal distance were significant, f(2, 87)= 18.894, p< .001, η2= .303, specifically, participants in the level of “four years ago” reported a significantly higher evaluation than that in the level of “four years ago”, t(1, 58)= 2.955, similarly, in the level of “four years ago” higher evaluation than that in the level of “last week”, t(1, 58)= 3.354, p< .001, the results revealed that with the extension of temporal distance, the evaluation for brand’s failure which is about functional defects was gradually enhanced; however in scenarios of brand's failure which is about harming to health, the main effect of temporal distance were not significant. In experiment two, 3(temporal distance: last week, two years ago and four years ago) × 2(self-pertinence：low, high) between subjects experimental design was conducted. It revealed that the main effect of temporal distance and self-pertinence were significant, f(2, 156)= 12.979, p< .001, η2= .143, f(1, 156)=69.210, p< .001, η2= .307, the interaction between temporal distance and self-pertinence was significant, f(2, 156)= 10.571, p< .001, η2= .119. in the low level of self-pertinence, the main effect of temporal distance were significant, f(2, 78)= 18.495, p< .001, η2= .322, specifically, participants in the level of “two years ago” reported a significantly higher evaluation than that in the level of “last week”, t(1, 52)= 3.252, p< .001, similarly, in the level of “four years ago” we found higher evaluation than that in the level of “two years ago”, t(1, 52)= 3.252, p< .001, the results revealed that with the extension of temporal distance, the evaluation for brand’s failure which was gradually enhanced in the low level of self-pertinence; however, in the high level of self-pertinence, the main effect of temporal distance were not significant. Conclusion: when the brand's failure is about harming health, consumers' evaluation were not influenced by temporal distance; the evaluation for brand’s failure which is about functional defects was gradually enhanced with the extension of temporal distance, but only in low level of self-pertinence. So we came to the conclusions that consumers’ evaluation for brand’s failure had ego defense mechanism. Related Articles | Metrics

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Security Affects Women’s Material Preference in Mate-choosing Yu KOU 2014, 37(4): 950-956.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4909KB) ( )   People may value possessions, in part, because ownership of goods promotes feelings of security. If so, women with low security should be inclined to choose men with good material condition as their mates. We test this prediction in two studies. Study 1 aims to explore the relationship between women’s security and their material preference in mate-choosing. Study 2 aims to test whether reducing women’s security would increase their material preference in mate-choosing. We took unmarried working women from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as participants in both studies. In study 1, we developed a scenario-based questionnaire to measure women’s preference in mate-choosing first. There’re three personal ads in the questionnaire, each shows a man’s photo and text describing the man’s character condition, outer condition and material condition. The three men are equivalent on the whole, without significant difference in average score of the three conditions (F(2, 162)=.06, ns) or in age (F(2, 162)=.13, ns). But the first man’s character condition is outstanding while the other two men’s are ordinary (F(2, 162)=69.38, p<.001), the second man’s outer condition is outstanding while the other two men’s are ordinary (F(2, 162)=80.13, p<.001), the third man’s material condition is outstanding while the other two men’s are ordinary (F(2, 162)=87.84, p<.001). We assume that women who choose the first man prefer character condition, women who choose the second man prefer outer condition, and women who choose the third man prefer material condition. Then, we used the scenario-based questionnaire and security questionnaire (α=.91) to explore the relationship between women’s security and their material preference in mate-choosing. The result shows the women who choose the third man with outstanding material condition hold significantly lower level of security than other women who choose the first or the second man (F(2, 354)=5.53, p<0.01, ===.03, 1-β=.85). In study 2, we employ priming paradigm and manipulate security to test whether reducing women’s security would increase their material preference in mate-choosing. First, we employ a test-retest design to check whether the priming would be valid. We measured participants’ security twice. The first time was for baseline (α=.93). After 2 weeks, we manipulated the participants’ security by mortality salience and measured their security again (α=.94). Finally we got 63 valid questionnaires. The result shows priming by mortality salience significantly reduces women’s security (Mbefore=3.38, S.D.before=.67; Mafter=3.10, S.D.after=.67; t(df=62)=6.64, p<.001, d=.84, 1-β=1.00). Then, we recruited 400 (315 valid data) participants and randomly divided them into priming group or control group. For priming group, we manipulated the participants’ security and then measured their preference in mate-choosing; for control group, we directly measured their preference in mate-choosing. Chi-square test shows the two groups’ preference in mate-choosing is significantly different (x2(df=2)=6.65, p<.05, Cramer’s φ=.15). Further, ratio test shows more women in priming group choose the third man than in control group (priming group: 35.26%, control group: 23.27%, |Z|=2.37, p<.01). Overall, unmarried working women in big cities with low security are inclined to choose men with good material condition. Low security boosting the pursuit of materials is the product of the contemporary background and also a manifestation of women’s psychological needs. The results provide references for the rational guide of women’s mate-choosing. Related Articles | Metrics

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Attentional Bias towards Negative Affect Stimuli in Violent Offenders : An ERP Investigation 2014, 37(4): 936-943.  Abstract ( )   PDF (5619KB) ( )   Abstract The violent crime is a highlighted problem of modern society, and it is always having a devastating impact on individuals and their families. While there has been extensive research on the effects of aggressive personality, demographic factors, prior exposure to violence, and psychopathology on violent offenders, there has been a relative dearth of research on the effects of neurocognitive factors on violent offenders. A neurocognitive perspective on violent offenders suggests that violent offenders have signi?cant cognitive impairments that may contribute to their violent lifestyle. Neuropsychological impairments have been reported in male batterers at a higher level than in controls (Teichner et al., 2001). More generally, Eckhardt et al. (1998) observed that batterers tended to commit a variety of cognitive errors, including making assumptions in the absence of objective evidence, and attributing the cause of an event to the hostile intentions of another person. While the source of these cognitive errors is not known, one hypothesis is that violent offenders have a bias towards over-allocating attentional resources to negative affective stimuli, at the expense of appropriate rational processing of ongoing discourse. Then the present study used event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate whether violent offenders are more vigilant to negative emotion. The N2pc ERP component was measured as an index of the allocation of spatial attention. Besides, we want to dig deeper the mechanisms underlie the attentional bias in violent offenders，which provide the basis and method for the prevention of violent crime and correction.. This study tests the hypotheses that (a) violent offenders have a neurocognitive bias favoring negative affect (angry face) stimuli and (b) explore the mechanisms underlie the attentional bias in violent offenders. We recruited 26 male inmates from local prison. 13 violent offenders, mean age 25 years(range 16–31 years, SD=7.07).13 nonviolent offenders, mean age 23 years(range 16–31 years, SD=4.22). Besides, there were no significance difference between violent and nonviolent offenders on state anxiety, and Aggression Questionnaire(P ＞ 0.05). All the participants had self-reported normal or corrected-to-normal eyesight. Three male subjects were excluded from data analysis because of excessive artifacts during EEG recording. Facial stimuli which were made by Facegen Modeller program were used to convey negative information. The faces were comprised by four individuals (2 females) each posing neutral, happy, and angry expressions. The external features of each of the faces were removed and the internal features were presented in a black rectangular frame. The experiment was comprised of five blocks. For each block, 128 trials were delivered. The faces were presented for 500 ms, followed by a random fixation between 500-1000ms. The subjects were told to search the target face(angry or happy face) and response as soon as fast, or for a 1800ms maximum. The inter-trial interval was randomly varied between 500 and 1500 ms. Electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded from 64 scalp sites using tin electrodes mounted in an elastic cap (brain products). Time windows representing the N2pc component were determined using visual search of individual participant waveforms as has been done in previous research (e.g., Eimer & Kiss, 2007). This ERP component is computed by taking voltage differences between corresponding pairs of electrodes located on the left and right posterior scalp after taking into account the hemi?eld in which attention is deployed .Analyses focused on the correct response trials only and on lateral occipital electrodes (PO7/PO8) within 240-380ms. A two-way repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) on the RT and average latencies was conducted, with Group (violent vs. nonviolent offender) as a between-subjects factor, and Target face (happy, angry, neutral) as a within-subjects factors. The ANOVA for RT revealed a signi?cant main effect for Group (violent vs. nonviolent offenders) （F（1，21）=7.997，P＜.010） and Target face ( happy, neural Vs angry face)（F（2，42）=14.573，P＜.01）. Notably, Group×Target face interaction is also signi?cant （F（2，42）=3.492，P＜.05）.Post hoc analysis indicated that RTs were signi?cantly shorter for violent offenders when the target face was “angry’’ relative to “neutral” and ‘‘happy’’. The ANOVA for N2pc response latencies revealed a signi?cant effect for Group×Target face ( F (1，21)=5.446，p=.030), further analysis revealed violent offenders showed significantly shorter response latencies when the target face was “angry’’ relative to “happy’’. There was no significant difference for nonviolent offenders when the target face was “angry’’ and ‘‘happy’’. These findings suggested that violent offenders have attentional bias for negative affect information compare to nonviolent offenders, which have been proved from the behavioral and ERP data. Also these findings suggested that the attentional bias mechanisms of violent offenders tend to be vigilant-avoid. Related Articles | Metrics

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Work-Family Conflict among New Generation Knowledge Workers: An Analysis Based on Interactions of Demographics Differences Chen Zhao 2014, 37(4): 944-949.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4027KB) ( )   New generation knowledge workers refer to employees who were born at 1980s or 1990s, and who have obvious independence and autonomy and think highly of life long education and growth. As the generation born after one-child policy implemented in 1979, new generation knowledge workers have got married and more One-Child couples have been coming into beings during last few years. Family responsibilities have been growing since they have to not only take care of their elderly parents, but also provide high quality educational resources and excellent growth environment for their children. Additionally, they are facing unprecedented work pressures and more and more intense job market competition. So they have to not only fulfill their present job responsibilities but also keep learning to get knowledge of the advanced technology and improve their social status and career competence. Work–family conflict will arise when work demands, time pressures, and strain from work domain hinder the capacity to meet demands and responsibilities from family domain. This paper will test demographics differences of new generation knowledge workers’ work–family conflict, and provide the target-oriented work family balance strategies to employees who are facing higher conflict. Demographics differences of work-family conflict and interaction effects of demographics variables were tested based on the data collected from 500 new generation knowledge workers from branches of a high-tech group corporation. This paper took gender, tenure and job level as independent variables and work-family conflict, measured by five items adapted from work-family conflict scale developed by Gutek et al. (1991), as dependent variables. The reliability of work-family conflict scale in this study was .74. In addition, this paper took two sets of control variables: firstly, two other demographics variables, education and income, which might have impacts on the results of this study, were controlled; secondly, two other outcome variables, job satisfaction and life satisfaction, proven to be highly correlated with work-family conflict in existing researches, were also controlled. Job satisfaction was measured by six items from job satisfaction scale developed by Tsui et al. (1992) with a reliability of .81, and life satisfaction was measured by five items from life satisfaction scale developed by Diener et al. (1985) with a reliability of .84. Hypotheses were tested by UNIANOVA in this study. Results showed that significant differences of gender and tenure were observed such that males experienced higher level of work-family conflict than females and employees with high tenure experienced higher level of work-family conflict than employees with low tenure. Results also indicated that two-way interaction effects of gender with tenure and job level respectively were significant such that although females’ work-family conflict was lower than males’, the increase of females’ work-family conflict was higher than males’; male managers’ work-family conflict was higher than ordinary employees’, but female managers’ work-family conflict was lower than ordinary employees’. Besides, three-way interaction effect of gender, tenure and job level was significant in this study. This finding means that work-family conflict of ordinary male employees with low tenure was higher than that of male managers; work-family conflict of ordinary male employees with medium or high tenure was lower than that of male managers; the increase of work-family conflict of male managers was higher than that of ordinary male employees; the level and increase of work-family conflict of female managers were both lower than that of ordinary female employees. Related Articles | Metrics

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The Effects of Accounting for Time on Prosocial Behaviors 2014, 37(4): 925-929.  Abstract ( )   PDF (3619KB) ( )   Previous research demonstrated that, by activating a economic utility mindset of time, accounting for time induced individuals to spend less time on others. However, the influence of accounting for time on prosocial behavior may extend beyond simply how time is spent. In this study, we not only retested the effect of billing time on time spent helping, but also explored the effect on donation. The first study sampled 29 college students. Participants engaged in a consulting task, where they made mock personnel decisions for a fictitious company. Participants were randomly assigned to either a non-billing control condition or a billing-time treatment condition. They engaged in a nearly identical consulting activity in both conditions, except participants in the billing-time condition kept a log cataloging “specifically what you have done and how much each office’s budget should be charged for that time every ten minutes.” Next, participants appraised the extent of fatigue and their mood, and then completed the assessment of helping behavior. Results showed that participants in the billing-time condition spent less time on others. The present results are consistent with recent findings that people who evaluate their time in terms of money spend less time on others. A total of 47 participants took part in the second study. The procedure was identical with the first study, except that dependent variable became money spent helping. Results showed that Participants in the billing-time condition spent less money on others. The third study sampled 332 participants who had worked for more than one year from network. Participants in the time/money condition calculated their hourly wage. In contrast, participants who were assigned to the control condition proceeded directly to the rest of the study session. Subsequent to the manipulation, participants responded on a measure of money spent helping. Results showed that participants who calculated their hourly wage would spend less money on others, after statistically controlling for individual differences and these covariates. The present study revealed that, for individuals who had worked, putting price on time also influenced their willingness to spend money on others. Therefore, we conclude that accounting for time not only induces individuals to spend less time on others, but also reduced participants’ willingness to spend money to help others. This indicated that billing time activated a mindset of economic utility maximization that was not limited to the value of time. Related Articles | Metrics

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Bi-factor Model: a New Measurement Perspective of Multidimensional Construct Zhong-Lin WEN Fang Jie 2014, 37(4): 973-979.  Abstract ( )   PDF (4448KB) ( )   Multidimensional constructs are frequently applied to the studies of psychology, education, management and organizational behavior. The conventional measurement methods, including the total score approach, the individual score approach and the higher-order factor model, can’t solve the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma in multidimensional testing. A better solution is to build a bi-factor model for the multidimensional construct. The bi-factor model is potentially applicable when (a) there is a general factor that is hypothesized to account for the commonality of all items; (b) there are multiple domain specific factors, each of which is hypothesized to account for the unique influence of the specific domain. The relationship between the bi-factor model and the higher-order factor model is discussed from the perspective of the concepts, mathematical models, parameters, and practical applications. The applications of the bi-factor model are demonstrated or summarized, including in the reliability study, the method effects of balance scales, exploratory factor analysis and item response theory. An example of bi-factor model is illustrated to explore the structure of Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale and show the existence of effects associated with positive and negative wording besides of the self-esteem trait. Related Articles | Metrics